Tag: perpetual war

US to Begin European Troop Withdrawal Talks, NATO Ambassador Says

In a move signaling a long-overdue shift in American foreign policy, the United States, under President Donald J. Trump, is preparing to open discussions with European allies on reducing its military footprint across the continent.

US Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker confirmed the Trump administration’s plans during a security forum in Estonia, stating that the conversations will formally begin after June’s NATO summit in The Hague, Reuters reported.

“Nothing has been determined,” Whitaker said, “but as soon as we do, we are going to have these conversations in the structure of NATO.” He made it clear this isn’t just another round of diplomatic foot-dragging. “It’s more than 30 years of the US desire to reduce troops in Europe. President Trump just said, enough—this is going to happen, and it’s going to happen now.”

The remarks starkly contrast with previous administrations’ foreign policy, which treated NATO like a sacred cow regardless of how little European members contributed in return. Trump-era officials have increasingly called out what they see as chronic European underfunding and dependency.

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth minced no words earlier this year, declaring that “stark strategic realities prevent the United States of America from being primarily focused on the security of Europe.”

In private discussions over the allegedly encrypted messaging app Signal, Hegseth reportedly expressed his “loathing of European free-loading,” a sentiment echoed by Vice President J.D. Vance. The two have become key voices pushing to restore a foreign policy rooted in American interests, not global entanglements.

Despite the uproar in some NATO capitals, Whitaker reassured allies that the US isn’t abandoning the alliance altogether—just recalibrating its role. “We’re going to remain in this alliance,” he said. “But we’re not going to have any more patience for foot-dragging.”

The numbers behind the move are substantial. America currently maintains an estimated 128,000 troops across Europe, with Germany hosting the lion’s share. Poland, Italy, and the UK also house significant contingents.

But the political winds are shifting, and rightly so. Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk recently tried to tamp down fears after the US quietly redeployed forces away from a major Ukrainian support hub. Still, the writing’s on the wall.

For decades, Washington has carried the bulk of the military burden in Europe, funding and defending nations that often lecture Americans while failing to meet even basic NATO spending obligations. With ballooning domestic priorities and a border crisis back home, many Americans—especially those aligned with the nationalist, Trump-aligned right—are asking why their sons and daughters are still stationed abroad to defend countries that won’t defend themselves.

Critics of the withdrawal, unsurprisingly, warn of a “security gap” that Russia could exploit.

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How War Propaganda Has Fueled American Foreign Policy For A Century

The New York Times this week reports that the Trump administration has canceled many grants that were to fund “research” on “misinformation.” This is being presented by the media as a dastardly deed that will supposedly allow the spread of misleading or false information through various media channels.

Of course, if there were any genuine interest in studying the most egregious efforts to spread misinformation, media outlets like the Times would study themselves and their friends in the regime. After all, few organizations have been more complicit than the national American media and the US foreign policy establishment when it comes to spreading much of the worst propaganda in American history. I say “worst” because this propaganda has often been used in service to the worst ends: to gin up support for a variety of wars resulting in the deaths of thousands—sometimes even hundreds of thousands—of innocents.

Relatively recent media-regime partnerships in propagandistic misinformation include the “Russiagate” hoax, various efforts to obscure US meddling in Ukraine, and the nearly nonstop drumbeat of “news” stories over the past twenty years designed to push for regime change in various countries from Venezuela to Russia to Libya and to Syria—where the Assad regime, according to US design, was recently replaced by Islamist terrorists. And then, of course, there is the nonstop stream of misinformation designed to prop up the State of Israel and obscure its many war crimes. And let’s not forget the fictional “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq which the US presented to the United Nations as established fact.

Throughout all this, the interventionist “foreign policy blob” in Washington received near universal support from its friends at publications like the Times and the Washington Post.

The United States did not invent these tactics. Over the past 100-plus years, however, perhaps no regime was more innovative than the British when it came to inventing “facts” designed to manufacture popular consent for wars and more foreign intervention. The United States has done its best to adopt similar methods, however, and creating invented narratives in service to the regime’s foreign policy goals is now standard operating procedure for the American state as well.

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As Rumors of a New Big Offensive Swirl, Putin Appoints Mordvichev as New Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Ground Forces – A General that Ukraine Announced it Had Killed!

While the peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine are still showing a lot of promise, the war continues unabated – top Russian negotiator Medinsky quoted famed French General Napoleon to say that ‘Wars & negotiations take place at same time’.

And it seems that the longer the conflict lasts, the more painful the territorial losses of the Kiev regime will be.

As rumors have been circling around for a few months of an upcoming big Russian offensive, President Vladimir Putin made a pivotal change in the command structure of his army, elevating a young, hungry and accomplished General that – if we are to believe the Ukrainians and the MSM – came back from the dead!

Colonel General Andrei Mordvichev has been appointed the new Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Ground Forces.

He was the former commander of “Tsentr” (Center) forces, responsible for the conquest of Mariupol, Avdeevka, and surrounding areas.

His nomination is incredibly awkward for the Ukrainians and their cheerleaders in the MSM, who have reported that he was killed in a strike on an airfield!

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The Pentagon Is Using a Fabricated Chinese Threat to Build Genetically Engineered Soldiers

On April 8, a bipartisan commission chartered by Congress warned that China is rapidly advancing a terrifying new military threat: genetically engineered “super soldiers.”

The report by the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology (NSCEB) urges the U.S. to respond with a sweeping effort to militarize biotechnology. It offers little concrete evidence that such Chinese programs even exist.

In the name of national security, Washington is now pushing for deregulation, massive government investment, and human experimentation. Experts say this effort echoes Cold War-era paranoia and threatens to erode ethical boundaries in science and warfare.

A Congressional Research Service fact sheet on the report claims its contents “describe how biotechnology could potentially revolutionize agricultural production in the U.S., transform U.S. health care, and change the future of computing power.” While that may sound promising, the report’s focus is overwhelmingly on using biotechnology for military purposes, including the creation of “genetically enhanced soldiers.” The report also states that “biotechnology’s impact on surveillance could be … transformative.”

The report argues that biology could revolutionize warfare just as airpower did in the 20th century, promising new advantages in stealth, logistics, and real-time physiological monitoring of soldiers. It calls for “a fundamental rethinking” of how the U.S. uses biotech in combat.

Biotechnology also promises new advantages in stealth and mobility. Dynamic biological camouflage, for instance, could shield warfighters from thermal detection, while wearable biosensors could adjust mission parameters based on real-time physiological data. Taken together, these advances demand a fundamental rethinking of how biology supports sustained, agile military operations, revolutionizing what it means to defend the U.S., including building for, nourishing, and healing forces in the field.”

The report argues that “winning” the global biotech race will “require de-risking the domestic production of defense-related biotechnology products” and changing “military specifications” to enable biotechnology companies to sell their products to the Pentagon more easily. Repeated references are also made to the need to “reduce or remove regulatory hurdles for familiar products.” Although the report never defines “familiar products,” the term may refer to controversial and experimental technologies such as CRISPR gene editing and mRNA therapeutics.

NSCEB also calls for large-scale “biological databases” to be treated as a “strategic resource.” It urges Congress to direct the Pentagon to build commercial facilities across the country to biomanufacture products deemed “critical for DOD needs.” The U.S. government “will need to shoulder some of the risk of early-stage financing for biotechnology and encourage private investment,” such as “[streamlining] regulatory processes to alleviate unnecessary burdens and accelerate the commercialization.”

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US official admits misleading Trump on US troop numbers in Syria

Outgoing Ambassador Jim Jeffrey, the U.S. special envoy for Syria, admitted in an interview with Defense One to misleading President Donald Trump about the true number of U.S. troops deployed in Syria and convincing the president not to withdraw troops.

Jeffrey said, “We were always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had there.” Jeffrey said the actual number of troops in northeast Syria is “a lot more than” the approximately 200 troops Trump agreed to keep in the country in 2019.

According to anonymous sources who spoke with Defense One, the true number of U.S. troops in Syria is said to be around 900, though the precise number is classified and reportedly remains unknown even to Trump and other members of his administration hoping to bring U.S. troops out of foreign engagements.

Trump called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria at the end of 2018 and again in October 2019, both times receiving pushback. Despite calling for the withdrawals, both times Trump was convinced to leave a contingent of U.S. troops in the county.

“What Syria withdrawal? There was never a Syria withdrawal,” Jeffrey told Defense One. “When the situation in northeast Syria had been fairly stable after we defeated ISIS, [Trump] was inclined to pull out. In each case, we then decided to come up with five better arguments for why we needed to stay. And we succeeded both times. That’s the story.”

After his October 2019 call for the withdrawal of troops from Syria, Trump was convinced last year to agree to keep between 200 and 400 U.S. troops in the country to maintain control of oil fields. The actual number of troops in the country is said to be much higher than Trump was led to believe.

CNN national security correspondent Jim Sciutto similarly tweeted hearing claims that Department of Defense officials deceived Trump about the true U.S. presence in Syria.

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How NYT Reports on Weaponized Famine So You Don’t Have to Give a Damn

More than two months ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a complete blockade of aid—including food, water and medical supplies—from entering the besieged Gaza strip. It’s a severe escalation of Israel’s now 19-month genocide against Palestinians in Gaza—and what the World Health Organization (5/12/25) has described as “one of the world’s worst hunger crises, unfolding in real time.”

With no replenishing stock, aid groups have begun running out of supplies to distribute to families in need.

The UN Relief and Works Agency (5/16/25) reports that their “flour and food parcels have run out,” and that “one third of essential medical supplies are already out of stock.” More than a week ago, World Central Kitchen reported that they no longer have supplies to cook hot meals and bake bread for starving families—they’ve since repurposed their pots to distribute filtered water.

With Gaza’s entire population experiencing crisis-level food insecurity, and with three-quarters facing “emergency” or “catastrophic” levels of deprivation, the famine has been recognized by Human Rights Watch interim executive director Federico Borello as “a tool of extermination.”

At first glance, the April 29 New York Times offered what many would call an objective account with the headline: “UN Faults Israel Over Blockade of Aid for Gaza” (web version here: 4/28/25).

A closer look at the piece however, reveals the Times’ usual spinelessness in its Gaza coverage, unquestioningly accepting Israeli framing in its supposed right to carry out its ongoing genocide.

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The Nuclear Missile Launch Sites Buried Under Greenland’s Ice Revealed

Camp Century, part of a secret Pentagon plan called Project Iceworm, was designed in the late 1950s as a hidden network of nuclear missile launch sites beneath Greenland’s ice. Built in 1959 and abandoned by 1967 due to unstable ice, the facility was meant to store 600 medium-range ballistic missiles.

Today, it lies buried under at least 100 feet of ice, according to the Wall Street Journal, who wrote a lengthy piece on the sites this week.

Although presented as a research station, its real military purpose remained classified until 1996. Nina Erofeeva explained: “The first [licenses] have been received for the creation of oil storage facilities, in the Krasnoyarsk territory. This was also an unusual case. Russia has never had oil storage facilities. Oil has always been pumped through pipelines. Given recent events and the lack of infrastructure in the Arctic zone, oil storage facilities are needed in several regions. Accordingly, oil will be placed in these oil storage facilities so as not to burn it during pilot development.”

With 21 tunnels stretching nearly two miles under the ice, the base housed around 200 personnel and operated on nuclear power. Robert Weiss, a physician stationed there in the early 1960s, recalled: “We did realize that it was important; that the Russians could come over the top of the Pole.”

Life at Camp Century was harsh but bearable. “When I got there, it was blowing snow and minus 50 degrees,” Weiss said, remembering how he spent weeks underground. “It wasn’t very hard living from that standpoint.” Joking about the isolation, he added: “We used to say that there was a pretty girl behind every tree. Of course, there was one problem: There were no trees.”

The Journal writes that the base’s full scale wasn’t revealed until April last year, when NASA’s cryospheric scientist, Greene, captured the first complete images using advanced ice-penetrating radar. “You see how the buildings and tunnels were connected, how people had to move about in their day-to-day life, and think what a wild experience it must have been to be stationed there,” Greene said.

The U.S. presence in Greenland has long been controversial. During the Cold War, the U.S. operated 17 bases there and stationed about 10,000 troops. Today, fewer than 200 remain at Pituffik Space Base.

Tensions rose again when President Trump openly criticized Denmark for not securing Greenland and even suggested taking the island by force for U.S. security. Denmark reminded Washington of the 1951 treaty that already allows U.S. bases there but firmly rejected any takeover.

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Chinese ‘Kill Switches’ Found in US Solar Farms

Chinese ‘kill switches’ have been found hidden in American solar farms, prompting calls for Ed Miliband to halt the rollout of renewables over security concerns. The Telegraph has the story.

On Thursday, the Energy Secretary was urged to impose an “immediate pause” on his green energy blitz to review whether UK solar plants are also at risk.

The components found in the US included cellular radios capable of switching off the equipment remotely, raising serious concerns about grid security, according to Reuters.

They were found inside power inverters manufactured by unnamed Chinese companies.

Power inverters are the key links between solar or wind farms and the rest of the power system, converting their electricity so the wider grid can use it.

One source told Reuters that compromising such equipment would give Beijing the ability to inflict blackouts on the West, claiming it would create “a built-in way to physically destroy the grid”.

China has dismissed the claims as a smear. But the discovery has sounded alarm bells within the US Government and is likely to prompt a similar scramble in Britain.

Andrew Bowie, the Shadow Energy Minister, on Thursday said the “worrying revelations” should spark serious concern for Mr Miliband and called for an urgent investigation.

He said: “We were already aware of concerns being raised by the Ministry of Defence and the security and intelligence services surrounding possible monitoring technology on Chinese-built wind turbines – but given the dominance of China in solar, these developments are equally if not even more worrying.

“Ed Miliband’s Made in China transition – clean power at the expense of everything else – is a threat to our national security and makes a mockery of his claims on energy security.

“It is essential that an immediate pause and review is carried out to ensure the safety and security of our energy system.”

One industry source on Thursday said that British solar farms used inverters from a variety of sources, including Chinese, American, German and Israeli suppliers.

A UK Government spokesman said: “We would never let anything get in the way of our national security, and while we would not comment on individual cases, our energy sector is subject to the highest levels of national security scrutiny.”

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Israel concedes error in video claiming to show Hamas tunnels under Gaza hospital

The Israeli military has conceded that a video it released claiming to show Hamas-built tunnels underneath a southern Gaza hospital actually shows different buildings.

On Tuesday, at least nine so-called bunker-busting missiles hit the European Hospital compound in Khan Younis, Gaza’s last cancer and cardiac care hospital.

At least 16 people were killed and more than 70 were injured. The hospital has now had to close due to the damage caused to buildings and water and sewage connections.

Patients have been evacuated, although nearby intensive care units have struggled to accommodate the extra people.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and domestic intelligence agency Shin Bet (ISA) claimed Hamas had constructed a command centre underneath the hospital, and said it believed the group’s military commander Mohammed Sinwar was killed in the attack.

The IDF released a video late on Tuesday highlighting what it said was tunnel infrastructure.

But analysis of satellite imagery shows the buildings highlighted are in a school 150-200 metres away.

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NATO state considers subjecting older citizens to military service

The Finnish Defense Ministry has submitted a proposal to raise the maximum age for military reservists to 65, according to a press release published on Wednesday. The move is part of a broader militarization trend among European NATO member states.

The proposed reform would apply to all citizens liable for being called up who were born in 1966 or later, potentially adding 125,000 personnel to Finland’s reserve forces over a five-year transition period. If enacted, the total number of reservists is projected to reach one million by 2031, the Defense Ministry noted.

Currently, rank-and-file soldiers are removed from the reserves at age 50, while officers exit at 60. The proposal would not apply retroactively to those already over 60.

According to the ministry, refresher training for 50–65-year-olds would be organized for those assigned wartime duties. No upper age limit would be set for military service volunteers.

The bill is expected to be submitted to the Finnish Parliament before its summer recess begins in late June.

The EU countries, including Finland, have been militarizing amid persistent claims that Russia could attack the bloc in the coming years. Moscow has denied having such intentions and has accused NATO and EU officials of “irresponsibly stoking fears” of a fabricated threat.

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